Today we broke up into two groups, to go to our professors condo to cook a meal in Italin style, one group for lunch and the other for dinner. My group chose to fix dinner. Italins have a way with cooking; five ingrediants or less. Ironically enough, we followed this tradition and made an appitizer, main course, and a vegetable.
First we began at the market in the Campo del Flora Plazza early this morning. The market usually opens around 7:30am and ends around 3:00pm every day. Then the clean up comes through and prepares the plazza for the evening so the restraunts can set up for dinner. In our two groups: lunch group and dinner group, we broke apart once more into groups of two and three people to be sent out into the market place to pick up some ingrediants to be used in our meal later. A Italin market is very similar to an Farm Market, only the foods available are much different of course, and there are other idems available as well. Wines, fruits, flowers, memorabila, and cheeses just name a few of the things you would find if you came to Campo del Flora to get your produce.
My group was incharge of buying the Zuchinni flowers, (the flower that blooms when the Zuchinni grows and in America we just disregaurd it) and we also needed a cup of ricotta cheese. I was the only one in my group familar with what the zuchinni flower looked like and I was fast to find them. A small tupperware bowl full cost us 2 Euro (about $3.00). We could not find the ricotta cheese so we were off the hook and the professor took us to a meat and cheese shop to buy what we needed. It is important to understand that in Itatly there are no market place Kroger stores or Super Walmart stores where everything you need is in one big store.
*Unfortunitely I do not have a picture of the market to share with you. I am deeply sorry. If I get the chance I will go back to the market and get one before we leave to come home!
Once we purchased our ingrediants we were free for the day until 5:00pm when one of our professors came over to our hotel to meet us to lead us to their condo to begin preparing dinner.
When we arrived at the condo we were greeted by Mrs. Recchie at the front door and led into the kitchen. We were told that the lunch group did a wonderful job and that we were going to have to work hard to do the same. As if it was some kind of competition and there was a prize at stake.
We began by laying out all of our ingrediants we had bought earlier in the day and set up a photo shoot.
After this we then broke up in our small groups, the same that we were in for hunting for our items at the market, and by direction began preparing the food. One group began peeling tomatoes and chopping them up, another dicing garlic, another chopping up various seasonal vegetables. And our group began mixing the ricotta cheese, parmesan cheese, salt and pepper and basil together in a bowl. Then we took our Zuchinni flowers and with a spoon, indivually stuffed each one. While two of the group members worked on stuffing the flowers, I prepared the topping. I took bread crums, salt and pepper, basil and a little melted butter and mixed it until it was fluffy. Then we sprinkled on the topping, the bread crums, onto the stuffed Zuchinni flowers. After this our preparations, in our group was finished, as we slid them into the oven, in a roasting pan.
One of the other groups worked on simmering their tomato sauce. I believe it was only fresh diced tomatoes, garlic, salt and pepper and fresh basil leaves. The last group took their chopped vegetables and put them in a pan, poured extra virgin olive oil over them, and sprinkled them with salt and pepper and they too went into the oven.
Before we knew it, Mr. Recchie-Darbie poured uncooked pasta into a large pot of boiling water and the pasta was done! It was time for one last photo shoot, before we ate!
I have to admit that my stomach was turning since this morning, to the thought that I would be eating a tomato based sauce pasta tonight for dinner, however, I was willing to give it a try and gosh darn it, it was amazing! The flavors were so unexpainable. It was by far the best tomato pasta I have ever had.
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